Arctic Monkeys at Finsbury Park – Saturday Review
(Courtesy of Sam Nogalski)
With people hyping it up to be their very own ‘Stone Roses at Spike Island’ or ‘Oasis at Knebworth’, it would have been very easy for Arctic Monkeys to see Finsbury Park as their career’s defining moment, but as Alex Turner once famously said: “don’t believe the hype.” Sure, these shows were massive occasions but the band have been keen to play down the magnitude of the shows, describing them as “their party” rather than as some sort of peak.
Against my better judgment, I went to an all-nighter on the Friday night so suffered the five and a half hours coach journey from Manchester to London on one hour’s sleep. After arriving in London, navigating the confusing underground system and dropping our bags off at the hostel, Me and my mate Sam arrived at Finsbury Park shortly after the gates opened at about 4.15pm.
Despite not queueing since the early hours of the morning, we managed to be one of the first 10,000 people to arrive and so made our way to the front pit. After taking it in turns to go to the bar to pay the (predictably) extortionate £4.15 for a very watered down pint of Strongbow, we decided to settle on the Bulmers which was just as expensive but bottled so not watered down.
Slightly faded ‘Front Pit’ wristband
The first band to take to the stage were Royal Blood, who generated an incredible sound considering the band only consists of two people. Miles (fucking) Kane followed and got the crowd in the party atmosphere with his high-energy set, which included a number of singalongs and a genius cover of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ during ‘Give Up’. The main support band were Australian’s Tame Impala, who despite being quite a big band were quite an unusual choice for main support as they brought the tempo back down after Miles Kane.
After Tame Impala, there was a half hour wait for Arctic Monkeys to take to the stage and you could feel the atmosphere building inside the pit. On the screens there were some pretty west animations from the same visual company that produced the ‘Do I Wanna Know’ video and as it got closer to 9.30pm more scenes from that video got played into the screen and the ‘AM’ soundwave transformed into profile shots of the four band members.
When the first drum beats of ‘Do I Wanna Know’ kicked in, things got a little bit crazy and once Alex Turner started playing the now classic riff, the crowd chanted along with it with incredible volume. It’s hard to imagine Arctic Monkeys ever opening a gig with a song other than it these days and if there was any doubt that ‘AM’ is a class album, the band’s brave decision to open potentially the biggest show of their career with THREE songs from it put them doubts to rest with the crowd singing along with every single word.
Once ‘Brianstorm’ kicked in, there was a brief moment where I thought I was going to die with the crowd going absolutely berserk. I got thrown about like a wet trackie top but managed to survive to see them revisit some more of their back-catalogue, playing songs from each of their four previous albums including crowd favourite ‘Dancing Shoes’ and ‘Library Pictures’ for the first time in England since 2011. Even some of the fans who aren’t so fond of the “full moon music” from 2009’s Humbug seemed to have very much warmed to ‘Crying Lightning’ shouting the psychedelic lyrics back at Alex Turner with great enthusiasm.
The brilliantly lusty ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High’ was surprisingly followed by ‘Fireside’, arguably one of AM’s weaker tracks which resulted in an all too temporary lull in the atmosphere, but it was cranked back up with ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.’ This could be a controversial opinion as it did get a great reaction from the crowd – me included – but I’m not sure the song’s played with the energy it requires anymore and I believe it may have sadly run its course as a live track.
The band then slowed things back down again with three of their ‘ballads’ of sorts, including the beautiful ‘Cornerstone’ on acoustic guitar but there was a certain romance in the atmosphere as opposed to the lull felt during Fireside. The sexy ‘Knee Socks’ followed with Bassist Nick O’Malley doing a grand job of recreating Josh Homme’s haunting backing vocals from the album version. The main set ended with two songs from their second album ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’; ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ going down brilliantly as always and my all time favourite ‘505’ closing out the set to chants of ‘Miles’ as Miles Kane surprisingly didn’t take to the stage to accompany the band as he usually does.
However, anyone desperately hoping to see a Miles and Alex reunion weren’t disappointed as Mr Kane made his way to the stage to reform the Last Shadow Puppets and play the brilliant ‘Standing Next to Me’ acoustically. The rest of the encore comprised of ‘One For The Road’, a song I’m far from a massive fan of but which sounded mega live. ‘I Wanna Be Yours’, the band’s gorgeous rendition of the John Cooper Clarke poem of the same name. Finally, an extended version of ‘R U Mine?’, moshpits were formed and yet again I temporarily feared for my life as I launched myself into one but there couldn’t have been a better ending for what was the best gig of my life.
It seemed to take forever getting out of the park, including hopping a fence and walking through a playground with fully grown adults on the climbing frames and slides. Once we had got out of the park I felt lost (mainly because we pretty much were) and it left me wanting to relive the whole day again (minus the hungover coach journey). This wasn’t the hit-laden set I had predicted but it didn’t even matter. It just proved to me that AM is a true modern classic of an album and confirmed Arctic Monkeys as my favourite band and one who I believe can scarily get even better. If I had one complaint, it would be Alex Turner’s lack of audience interaction but he doesn’t really need to speak, the music speaks for itself.
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